Video: A Greener Madison Square in New York City

More People Friendly CitiesFor those of you who enjoyed yesterday's video conversation with New York City's Commissioner of the Department of Transportation Janette Sadik-Khan (and we know many of you did!), here's a kind of follow up that our friends at StreetFilms did with footage that they couldn't use the first time. It shows the transformed Madison Square in NYC and how much pedestrian and bike-friendly it is.From the StreetFilms description:

We already touched on Madison Square in our in-depth interview with Janette Sadik-Khan last fall, but we always felt that it deserved a much closer examination based upon all the footage we couldn't use in that Streetfilm. In fact, I feel like even at this length, this short doesn't really do it justice. It also hit me while editing that I've started to forget what an ugly nightmare that nexus of Broadway & 23rd used to look like. Chances are you have to, so here is a reminder of the great work NYC DOT has done there. Take a gander, then go out in your community or city and spread the word that well designed public spaces work.

As commenters pointed out yesterday, many cities are ahead of NYC when it comes to human-scale, walkable, bikeable streets, and NYC itself was never that bad (people do walk a lot). But this is about taking it to the next level and applying these principles in cities that have very high visibility. Paris' bike-sharing program inspired many others, and let's hope that the positive changes in New York City will do the same.